Saturday, March 18, 2017

“Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real essence of things, simplicity is at bottom complexity and one must be nourished on its essence to understand its significance.” — Constantin Brâncuși

While Carla and Slavomíra were preparing their exhibition, they were each reading a book which they then recommended to me: The Thinking Hand by Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa. It’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in the work of hands in connection with art and craft, and it is in this text that I found the above quote by Brancusi. Simplicity (and that explanation of it, in particular) is the idea that keeps returning to me as I think about the JOON exhibition.
Many of the works evoked a sort of “primitive modernism” that belies the refined and time consuming labor that went into them. By contrast, some works were made quickly, but were the result of hours of thought and sketching. Brâncuși mentioned “the essence of things”, and Slavomíra and Carla’s exhibition explored the essence of space and drawing (and their boundaries, lines, and dimensions).

To steal another quote found in Pallasmaa’s book, this one by Renzo Piano: “You start by sketching, then you do a drawing, then you make a model, and then you go to reality – you go to the site – and then you go back to the drawing. You build up a kind of circularity between drawing and making and back again.” This brings me to the setup of the gallery space. The gallery was a white rectangle, and in the center of the room stood a white table illuminated brightly from above, with small objects placed on its surface and padding on the floor underneath. By viewing the 3-dimensional objects from above and then looking at their 2-dimensional shadows from below, visitors were able to quickly grasp the connection between idea–drawing–object. Complexity made simple, again.

There is another element of the work of Carla and Slavomíra (both individually and in the context of this exhibition) that I think is found far too infrequently in art — and that element is playfulness. During the exhibition, they invited visitors (old and young) to freely play with the objects and make new arrangements which allowed visitors to share in that delight, but more seriously it allowed them to directly explore the “circularity between drawing and making.” It is clear that both artists find joy in the process of creation (or “experimentation and the art of play”, as Pallasmaa calls it). The music for the exhibition, sculpted by sound artist José Pedro Carvalho, would have been a bit eerie if not balanced by this playfulness. Instead, it created a relaxing and zen-like ambiance in the gallery. It may be subtle, but that sense of calm and play has been preserved in this catalog.

Monday, February 16, 2015

My small contribution to the exhibition "Zamatový objekt túžby", that takes place at Galéria Gagarinka from 28.1.2015 until 7.3.2015. More is written by curator Juliana Mrvová here:
http://galeria.gagarinka.sk/aktuality/

Must Joon in English means black line. Line is what remains after touching paper with a pencil or with any kind of tracing tool on any kind of platform/material. Black is the colour that supports the different characteristics of a line in the most powerful way. A simple black line helps to focus on the nature of the line itself, gesture, spontaneity and its simplicity supports collaborative activity.

We are a collective of international artists and students with different backgrounds whose common interest is drawing. We met at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn in 2013 and 2014. We started meeting, often for a simple reason – to draw people, objects, buildings and spaces around us. Drawing brought us together.

Soon it became not only about observing and studying the surroundings, but also about exploring drawing as a media itself and creating new ways of drawing within the group – by collective approach. By using drawing games (some of them were invented by some of the members while experimenting and trying new ways of collaborative possibilities) and experiments we developed very playful, innovative and joyful ways of spending time together creatively. Each of us has brought his or her own style and ideas to the group. Not every session is the same, we “learn by doing”. What began with spontaneous meetings at private and public spaces at bars, parks, streets, soon turned out to be a part of our weekly schedule. Within the group we react to each other while drawing, it is a dialogue without speech. We see drawing as an important and helpful tool of bringing different people together.

The results are not only drawings. We created videos, animations, made up new drawing games, discovered drawing in a space and explored black line as a uniting tool. By collecting our works and sorting the games for this publication we would like to maintain and spread interest of this idea of collaborative drawing among others.

The essential part of my work is a practical and theorethical research of the relationship between drawing and space and a role of drawing in the creative process of thinking and making. In my work I deconstract drawing as well as jewellery into a fundamental symbols.

Drawing is like thinking, it takes you from one idea to another. I try to input this freedom of drawing into the jewellery process of making. Jewellery is a medium known for its utilittnes, aesthetics priorities and wearable demands.

What will happen, if I work with the silver as with a paper sheet, or with wire as with pencil? In my work, I research a primary signs of visual language as are a line, point, area in drawing and wire, sheet of metal or a hole in in the ﬁeld of jewellery. This most essential alphabet visualized in objectes

are combined into installations mostly in the way of naturalist do in the museums, on the long white shelters with pieces laying down with their own exact order next to each other, as a part of the neverending process. I combine signs and vocabulary of visual language with texts, words, and researching a different limitations or deﬁnitions in both languages. During research and production arise new ideas and process is still ON.